Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
Posted on 11/30/2004 3:08:25 PM PST by Ed Current
Guilty as charged. Yes, your honor, I unflinchingly plead guilty.
Columnist Les Kinsolving called me out by name recently and said that I, as president of American Life League, was a practitioner of fetal fanaticism - and deadly extremism - all because I insist that every abortion is evil. And I offer no apologies.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtondispatch.com ...
Les Kinsolving must be a Fetalphobe.
Three fundamental aspects for pro-lifers:
The medical and ethical arguments are much closer to being won than the legal argument. Anyone who has persuaded someone not to abort/murder has prevailed using the first two arguments. The sexual anarchists continue to prevail in the legal arena, by claiming that the liberty to murder trumps the right to life, and that a simple majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has a monopoly on constitutional interpretation which those bound by an oath of Office in Article 6, Clause 3 are forbidden to constitutionally challenge.
If abortion is murder, then as practiced in the United States it is mass murder on a scale that eclipses the Jewish Holocaust and is the profoundest of violations against the fundamental purpose of government.
Preachers, pundits & politicians fiddle as America enters the 4 decade of Roe v Wade.
The Avalon Project : President Jackson's Veto Message Regarding ...
If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the coordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.
The Avalon Project : Federalist No 78
The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.
It proves incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power 1 The celebrated Montesquieu, speaking of them, says: "Of the three powers above mentioned, the judiciary is next to nothing.'' "Montesquieu: The Spirit of Laws.'' vol. i., page 186.
The Avalon Project : Federalist No 51
But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates
Justice Curtis's warning is as timely today as it was 135 years ago:
"[W]hen a strict interpretation of the Constitution, according to the fixed rules which govern the interpretation of laws, is abandoned, and the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we have no longer a Constitution; we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is, according to their own views of what it ought to mean." Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, 621 (1857) (Curtis, J., dissenting).
The Imperial Judiciary lives. It is instructive to compare this Nietzschean vision of us unelected, life tenured judges--leading a Volk who will be "tested by following," and whose very "belief in themselves" is mystically bound up in their "understanding" of a Court that "speak[s] before all others for their constitutional ideals"--with the somewhat more modest role envisioned for these lawyers by the Founders.
"The judiciary . . . has . . . no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society, and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither Force nor Will but merely judgment . . . ." The Federalist No. 78, pp. 393-394 (G. Wills ed. 1982).
Or, again, to compare this ecstasy of a Supreme Court in which there is, especially on controversial matters, no shadow of change or hint of alteration ("There is a limit to the amount of error that can plausibly be imputed to prior courts," ante, at 24), with the more democratic views of a more humble man:
"[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, . . . the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." A. Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (Mar. 4, 1861), reprinted in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, S. Doc. No. 101-10, p. 139 (1989).
Beneath the Supreme Court's many astounding decisions in its 2002-2003 term, and the shifting judicial coalitions that produced those results, runs a unifying basso continuo: Constitutional law, in the sense of judicial decisions that are guided--at least in aspiration--by the text, structure, and logic of the written Constitution, is dead. It has been replaced, often as a matter of explicit doctrine, with subjective judicial impressions of popular sentiment or political utility. Federalist Outlook, The Term the Constitution Died, Michael S. Greve,Friday, July 25, 2003
"Finally, my Life-Protecting Judicial Limitation Act of 2003 (H.R. 1546) provides that the inferior courts of the United States do not have jurisdiction to hear abortion-related cases. Congress must use the authority granted to it in Article 3, Section 1 of the Constitution. The district courts of the United States, as well as the United States Court of Federal Claims, should not have the authority to hear these types of cases.
"Mr. Speaker, it is my hope that my colleagues will join me in support of these three bills. By following the Constitution and using the power granted to the Congress by this document, we can restore freedom of conscience and the sanctity of human life." [emphasis added]
These bills are pro-active measures that, if enacted, would greatly reduce the power and influence of the abortion lobby in this country and at the same time reduce the number of abortions and abortion-related activities currently funded with our tax dollars. Please insist that your Member of Congress support Congressman Paul’s efforts by co-sponsoring these three bills. Capitol Switchboard — 202/224-3121.
If the above comments seem exceedingly strange, further investigation may be necessary:
The Avalon Project : The Federalist Papers #s 78-83.
Dred Scott | Washington University in St. Louis This suit began an eleven-year legal fight that ended in the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a landmark decision declaring that Scott remain a slave. How does anyone know that the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford was wrong? See - (Curtis, J., dissenting) above.
Congress, The Court, And The Constitution
Government by Judiciary:The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment Sec Ed, Raoul Berger
Limiting Federal Court Jurisdiction To Protect Marriage For The States
Judicial Tyrants Should Be Impeached
Democracy by Decree | by Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod offer measures that they believe would restore politically accountable law, but American democracy might be too far gone. The will to fight has departed from legislative bodies, and the American people are distracted and uninformed. Legislators, mayors and governors have learned they can avoid making political enemies by letting judges decide divisive issues.
Schwarz, Chapter 10: "Abortion in Cases of Rape, Incest, Health and Life of the Woman?" "The child conceived in rape is one of us, merely smaller and less developed and more dependent, and not in full view, but equally a person. Killing her is wrong, just as killing any child is wrong. We must remember that the child is absolutely innocent of the crime of her father. She is not a part of her mother's body, and she is not a part of her father's character. She inherits character traits from both her parents, but in her individual being as a person, she is absolutely distinct from both of them. Even the character traits that are received from a parent are now her own traits. The child is totally her own person. She is not responsible for the crime that led to her conception, and she is untainted by it.1 Seeing her in these negative ways is sheer prejudice, not based on reality, but at odds with it." www.ohiolife.org/mqa/10-0.asp
Russell E. Saltzman, is pastor of Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church, Kansas City, Missouri, and editor of the independent Lutheran publication Forum Letter. This is reprinted with permission from the August 2002 Forum Letter, and is copyright 2002 by the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau. "Everything Personal: Children Born of Rape or Incest," Touchstone Magazine, Jan/Feb 2003. "I belong to an on-line support group (me, in a sup- port group, there's a picture) composed of adult children born of rape or incest. There are more of us in the former category than the latter. Jennifer is our webmistress, organizer, facilitator, coach, head nanny, chief nag (though very nice about it), and the child of a violent rape. Mostly, I lurk. But for some in the group, I am a kind of unofficial chaplain and sometime pastoral advisor. There are children born before Roe v. Wade as well as children born after Roe v. Wade. The handles adopted by some in the group are evocative: "former fetus," "unawares angel," names like that." www.touchstonemag.com/docs/issues/16.1docs/16-1pg19.html
Robert Hart, "Her Mother's Glory: The Hardest Abortion Case," Touchstone Magazine, Jan/Feb 2003. " She is a young lady who spreads joy wherever she goes. She has a place in the lives of many, not only her new husband, her parents, and her brothers, but many who know her well, and many who have met her in passing-a unique place that no one else could fill. She is happy by nature at 23, married, an avid reader, a good friend, a serious Christian. This is the person that these well-meaning people were willing to sentence to death. Oh, not now, not when they can see her; but when she was in danger the first time, in the womb and hidden from view." Her Mother's Glory by Robert Hart
Pamela Pearson Wong, "Abortion's House of Cards," Concerned Women for America, Family Voice, January/February 2001. "I, having lived through rape and also having raised a child 'conceived in rape,' feel personally assaulted and insulted every time I hear that abortion should be legal because of rape and incest," says Kathleen DeZeeuw in Victims and Victors. "I feel we're being used to further the abortion issue, even though we've not been asked to tell our side of the story." We can begin by educating the public and legislators on what the women themselves-the victims of rape and incest-say about abortion. "Get Victims and Victors to legislators. Ask them to call for congressional hearings," says Dr. Reardon. "Urge them not to provide money for abortions resulting from rape or incest until they hear what the women say." Concerned Women for America - Family Voice
David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa and Amy Sobie (Editors), Victims and Victors (San Francisco, CA 94109: Acorn Books, 2000). "In Victims and Victors, 20 women like the ones quoted above share what it is like to face a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. They speak bravely and candidly of the pain of sexual assault, of the sadness and trauma of abortion, and of the joy and healing of giving birth." Victims and Victors:Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies ...
Dr. and Mrs. J.C. Willke, Why Can't We Love Them Both, (Snowflake, AZ 85937: Heritage House 76, Inc., 1998) Chapter 29, Rape. States that 170 to 340 assault rape pregnancies occur per year in the United States. Why Can't We Love Them Both? On Line Book by Dr. and Mrs. Willke.
American Life League, Definition of abortion: "The administration of any drug, device, potion, medicine, or any other substance or the use of any instrument or any other means whatsoever with the specific intent of terminating the life of a preborn child [the human being in existence from fertilization until birth] or preborn children; "abortion" shall not be construed to include the following: 1. a case in which the unintended death of a preborn child or preborn children results from the use by a physician licensed to practice medicine under (insert code pertinent to law) of a procedure that is necessary to save the life of the mother or the preborn child or preborn children. And that is used for the express purpose of, and with the specific intent of, saving the life of the mother or of the preborn child or preborn children; 2. a spontaneous abortion; 3. the removal of a preborn child who has died; 4. any therapeutic treatment or surgery performed upon a preborn child or preborn children that results in the unintentional death of a preborn child or preborn children." American Life League - Abortion
CBHD: Death as Deliverance - J. Darryl Charles
While it is commonly assumed that the moral atrocities associated with the Holocaust were the exclusive domain of Adolf Hitler and his loyal henchmen Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler and Albert Speer, this was only the final act, as it were, of a narrative whose beginnings are traceable to the turn of the century. Indeed it would appear, as authors as diverse as Alexander Mitscherlich, Robert Jay Lifton, Michael Burleigh, and Wesley Smith have documented, that the path to medical evil was prepared "long before Nazism was even a cloud on the German horizon." One of the tragic legacies of social Darwinism, rooted in the presupposition of biological determinism, is that it assisted in giving justification--frequently couched in the language of "compassion"--to the elimination of lebensunwertes Leben, life that is unworthy of living, or, in the language of Darwinists, life that is simply unfit.
In addition to the ascendancy of biological determinism, an important step in legitimizing the killing of the weak, the infirm, the terminally ill, and the incompetent was the shift in ethos among medical doctors and psychiatrists several decades prior to WWII. Historian Robert Proctor has argued persuasively that the Nazi experiment was rooted in pre-1933 thinking about the essence of personhood, racial hygienics and survival economics and that physicians were instrumental both in pioneering research and in carrying out this program. In fact, Proctor is adamant that scientists and physicians were pioneers and not pawns in this process. By 1933, however, when political power was consolidated by National Socialists, resistance within the medical community was too late. Proctor notes, for example, that most of the fifteen-odd journals devoted to racial hygienics were established long before the rise of National Socialism.
Rehnquist, "Roe V. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973):
"To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter." caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=410&invol=113
FT January 2003: Constitutional Persons, Robert H. Bork made the following comments about Roe v. Wade:
"Blackmun invented a right to abortion....Roe had nothing whatever to do with constitutional interpretation. The utter emptiness of the opinion has been demonstrated time and again, but that, too, is irrelevant. The decision and its later reaffirmations simply enforce the cultural prejudices of a particular class in American society, nothing more and nothing less. For that reason, ROE is impervious to logical or historical argument; it is what some people, including a majority of the justices, want, and that is that....Science and rational demonstration prove that a human exists from the moment of conception....Scalia is quite right that the Constitution has nothing to say about abortion."
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
Personally, I believe that societal schizophrenia is the case. Would you like to have an open debate on this, this notion of self defense?
Les Kinsolving is from one of those old "venerable" Episcopalian families that were anti-Catholic from Day One. These days Les Kinsolving gets all worked up about liberals in the Episcopal Church but he could care less about slicing and dicing babies in the womb. Typical.
Kinsolving is normally on the right side of most issues. Yet of all things he is very pro-abortion,
It took a very long time for Les to admit that Partial Birth abortion is wrong.
On logical grounds, the pro-life position is even stronger: The unborn baby has DNA distinct from its mother; this combined with the very fact he grows daily testifies to his aliveness; viewed in light of these two facts, the right to abortion means the right to murder a distinct human being. Lastly, all of this begs the question: why should just women have this right? On what grounds? Privacy? Does that mean I have the right to murder my wife in the privacy of our bedroom and not be prescuted for murder?
I have never understood the logical argument of the pro-choice side. The most they can muster is A) emotion (why should she be forced to care for a baby she does not want? What about her career, her education?), and B) social pragmatics (overcrowding of cities, increase of crime, etc.). Neither of these are a silver bullet and both are easily dispatched.
Does the pro-choice person really believe as Scalia claims, or is that a pretense for murder?
In the 1960s, even Planned Parenthood preferred contraception (conception prevention) to abortion, because abortion was clearly viewed as ethically wrong.
Schizophrenia, in this case, is the triumph of emotion over reason.
Logically, the only humane reason for legal termination of a pregnancy is self defense, but of course such should not carry an automatic death sentence for the 'other' human in the equation. I believe there may be means to reach a compromise on abortion policy in America if approached from the logical side of 'self defense'.
The non-aggressor should plead the right of self defense to a group of sexual anarchists empowered by a judicial oligarchy that has absolutely no regard for the non-aggressor in the abortion contest?
Your first sentence is pretty much the reality. Your second sentence is off the mark ... I'm talking about approaching the American public, to see if we can return sanity to the debate and recognize the truth of the aliveness of the unborn.
This, of course, escapes the advanced liberal brain.
The Kid and Ilene are in the saloon and a dispute occurs, with Ilene calling Billy out into the street.
The Kid doesn't want any trouble today and just wants to leave town.
Ilene goes outside and Billy shortly follows to get on his horse, not face down Ilene.
Billy is talking loud enough for all to hear, that he is going to mount his horse and leave and wants no trouble today.
Ilene demands a show down and as The Kid mounts his horse; Ilene shoots him in the back.
Ilene claims self-defense and the Sheriff says; "Sounds good to me. That Kid was a slick one anyway and he had it coming."
The townsfolk toss the Sheriff outa town and hang Ilene.
With all due respect, society has been shizophrenic about abortion at least since 1973. What else is new?
Whadda ya want? A pat on the back or a gold star? In real life many of us have been unabashedly pro-life since the get go, despite the crap we've taken for it.
Better to lash out at the enemy than the ally. If the writer wants a star, well, I'll give him a star.
We still praise heroic soldiers, though plenty have
been heroic before. Doing what's right never loses
its honor.
The path for the acceptance of ALL abortion was firmly established in 1973 by Roe vs. Wade, and has NOTHING to do with the concept of rape, incest and life of the mother legal exceptions to abortion.
"Almost 32 years of compromise has brought us no closer to saving the babies – so why not try it my way?"
No thank you. If we can't even get laws passed with the exceptions (to my knowledge there hasn't even been such a law on the table), how do you suppose we will get laws passed without them?
Abortion is wrong in EVERY case. But if we can get a law passed that outlaws abortion at three months and beyond, I'll take it. If we are able to go from 9 months to three months, we will be able to go from three months to zilch.
I not only disagree with the tone of the author, but with the direction of her leadership. We've had far too many people like her in key positions in the pro-life movement and we are in sore need of some fresh air.
I also think people with her "style" (the non-compromising schtick is nothing new) have done more harm than good for the pro-life movement and I am tired of seeing the same mistakes being repeated over and over.
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